Jump into Reality
by jessicaxo
Summary: Post 'You Jump, I Jump, Jack' - Rory reconsiders her realtionship with Dean.


Disclaimer- I definitely do not own _Gilmore Girls_, or any of its characters.

Post- 'You Jump, I Jump, Jack-  
Rory reconsiders her relationship with Dean.

Jump into Reality

"That doesn't make sense. This is Dean we're talking about. He's crazy about you. He calls like 25 times a day. Have you seen the cover of his notebook? It's one step away from stalker material."

Her mother had said that, four years ago, when Rory was sixteen. Rory had just been dumped by Dean an hour ago, and was trying to explain the absurdity of the breakup.

No, not absurdity, Rory decided. Actually, yes, it had been an absurd reason for them to break up. Not to mean that they belonged together - not even close- but that had been a ridiculous reason to break up on Dean's part.

The two had been through a lot since then- A reuniting, and another year of dating; A new boy coming to town that Rory had befriended, much to Dean's protest; Dean's overwhelming protectiveness of Rory during the period of friendship between Rory and Jess; a second breakup over Jess; Dean's marriage to Lindsay; Rory's complicated relationship with Jess; Both of their other relationships failing; and a friendship that had developed prior to Jess's departure but in the duration of Dean's marriage. Of course, just recently, that friendship had completely lost its innocence when Dean had persuaded Rory to sleep with him although he was still married.

Wow. That is quite a plot for a soap opera, right there.

So now, Rory had a lot of thinking to do. Did she really want to be with Dean again, after all they had been through? He wasn't the greatest boyfriend, although he'd been pretty good in Rory's limited experience. He had dumped her in 10th grade when she refused to tell him she loved him after three months of dating. Honestly, he had essentially forced her to say it, by breaking up with her and refusing to speak to her or consider getting back together until she had finally just said it, spontaneously, when he showed up at Chilton one afternoon. Their passionate embrace had started the second third of their relationship, which she had then thought to have been the second half, before the little losing-her-virginity-in-an-extramaritial-affair ordeal.

Seriously, was it really her who had done that? Looking back on it, it doesn't seem like it was her. Now, with her whole new life at Yale with the paper, and her new, smart, upper-crust friends, and now Logan, Dean seemed so irrelevant. First of all, he was married to Lindsay when this whole affair started (yes, that was what she was calling it now, an affair) and although he had left her now, he was living in his parents' house, for god's sake. However much she tried to convince herself that it didn't bother her, and she didn't care that he was stuck at home in Stars Hollow, with no future, while she was at Yale and bound for grad school, with a bright future all mapped out for her, it did bother her the slightest bit. She did care.

So what did that mean? Rory ran her fingers through her hair, sighing with exhaustion. Was she going to break up with him? Pursue a relationship with Logan, maybe? She cared about Dean, that much was true, but it was the same way it had been when Jess showed up a few years ago. She thought she loved Dean; she thought she was attracted to him, until someone better came along to whom Dean simply didn't compare.

Was that what she thought? That Logan and Jess were ... better that Dean? Maybe they were more exciting, and smarter, and wittier. But Dean was reliable, stable, and kind to her. Wasn't that enough?

Sometimes she found it quite funny that the only time she ever really, really wanted to be with Dean was when she couldn't have him, when he was with Lindsay. As soon as he'd left his wife for Rory, she'd already become bored with him and wanted out.

So that was it. She wanted out.

Turning out her lights, she closed her eyes tightly, trying to picture Dean in her head. She wanted to see his face, to hear his argument for why she shouldn't dump him tomorrow. She wanted herself to feel sorry for him, to feel love for him and not want to do what she inevitably was going to do.

For some reason, she couldn't even see him at all. All she could see was the old truck he drove, and his parents' house in Stars Hollow, and the old apartment he used to share with Lindsay. At that moment, she did feel sorry for him, because she cared for him quite a bit. He was one of her best friends from her teenage years, but her life now wasn't right for him. That was just the way it was.


End file.
